Longer and Heavier Vehicles for Freight Transport

Panayotis Christidis and Guillaume Leduc

No JRC52005, JRC Research Reports from Joint Research Centre

Abstract: The European Commission is considering to allow the use of Mega-Trucks (abbreviated as MTs in this study), vehicles measuring up to 25.25 m and weighing up to 60t, for the whole of the European Union transport system. Such trucks are already in circulation in Finland and Sweden, while several member states are considering their introduction. The analysis of the impacts of mega-trucks is quite complicated since it entails the adoption of assumptions concerning the technical characteristics of future mega-trucks, the evaluation of costs at truck level, the estimation of the repercussions on costs for the transported goods, the prediction of the market share of mega-trucks and the calculation of the external impacts, including environmental damage, accidents and wear and tear. This study collected data on the technical and economic characteristics of mega-trucks and carried out a Monte Carlo analysis in order to take the uncertainty of the main influencing factors into acount. The result was a range of potentail costs and benefits. The impacts of the introduction of mega-trucks at EU level can be positive in both economic and environmental terms. The increased payloads per vehicle are expected to reduce transport costs and lead to significant savings for operators, industry and consumers. Since fewer trucks would be required to transport the same volume of trade, the environmental and other external costs of freight transport would also be lower, even though an individual mega-truck consumes and pollutes more than a conventional truck.

Keywords: Vehicles; transport (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-09
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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